DTCC’s Scott Scher on Structured Disagreement and Intellectual Humility in CTI Leadership

The Story This Time

Scott Scher, Associate Director - Cyber Threat Intelligence at DTCC, has built his career on a counterintuitive premise: effective intelligence teams provide justification for security decisions rather than predictions about future threats. This reframing shifts CTI from being blamed for “unforeseen events” towards being recognized as a core function that builds defensible risk management frameworks across entire security organizations. 

Scott discusses managing upward to leadership that lacks CTI expertise while maintaining technical rigor, the transition from tactical analyst to strategic leader, and why intelligence teams must proactively define AI integration rather than having it imposed by vendors promising to automate analysis workflows.

His perspective on team culture emphasizes empowerment through transparency, creating psychological safety where challenging leadership demonstrates engagement rather than insubordination, and hiring for the thinking process rather than technical credentials. 

Stories We’re Telling Today

• Intelligence as organizational justification creating defensible risk decisions rather than attempting to predict future threat actor behavior
• Structured analytic techniques and admiralty coding turning subjective assessments into methodology-backed frameworks
• Using structured disagreement where leaders deliberately argue opposing positions to stress-test analysis and eliminate groupthink
• Managing upward to senior leadership lacking CTI expertise who make decisions based on informal channels rather than formal intelligence assessments
• AI’s capability to replicate core intelligence functions and why teams must proactively define integration approaches
• Hiring for thinking process and intellectual curiosity rather than technical credentials alone
• Creating psychological safety where team members can challenge leadership decisions, demonstrating engagement, not insubordination
• Process documentation and structured methodologies serving as essential scaffolding that enables consistency, training, and institutional knowledge retention

Too busy; didn’t listen:

• Scott Scher positions CTI as organizational justification for security decisions rather than prediction, creating defensible frameworks.
• Structured analytic techniques, source reliability coding, and documented methodologies elevate subjective analysis into quantifiable risk management that withstands executive scrutiny.
• Effective intelligence leadership requires building team cultures where challenging leadership demonstrates intellectual engagement.
• AI can already replicate core intelligence functions, making it imperative that CTI teams define integration approaches before vendors impose automation from above.
• The transition to senior leadership involves managing upward to executives who lack CTI expertise, balancing technical skill maintenance with strategic stakeholder relationship building.

Skip to the Highlight of the Episode

14:55 - 15:17 “Diversity of thought is probably the most important thing you can have. Diversity in other areas as well is equally as important. And that brings different perspectives. Diversity of life experiences. Diversity of socioeconomic experience, things like that. Difference in education, all of that. I think that’s all super important because it brings all those perspectives, because that’s what you need.”